Death Row
by HecateA
Summary: Waiting to die is bad enough without the especially long wait. Oneshot.


**Hi! I was supposed to publish this before _The Blood of Olympus_ came out but I ran out of time. Unfortunately Rick Riordan made absolutely zero efforts to give my babies Frank and Hazel any development or closure in the last book and he left about twenty loose threads dangling about, so as frustrating and disappointing as this is, the premise of this story still applicable! Enjoy.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own the world of PJO.**

* * *

 **Death Row**

* * *

"This show's getting stupider and stupider," Frank said.

Hazel nodded, but she'd seen worst. TV had become a surprisingly important part of her day-to-day life recently. Netflix was somewhat of a complete addiction- hands down one of her favourite things about the outside world as a whole. She stayed put, her head against Frank's chest and her legs stretched out on the couch in front of the television.

"I have to go upstairs for a sec," Frank said. "You don't have to pause."

Hazel fumbled for the remote anyways. "I'll come up with you."

The first few days after Frank came back from a deployment his appetite was all over the place. Hazel could cook anything, order any takeout that Vancouver had to offer, but his appetite would be scrambled up by jetlag, metabolism shifts and the pure stress of having worked so long and now being at ease and having his patients' cases in the hands of another army doctor.

The walls on the staircase of Zhang Manor showed pictures of the Seven, old pictures of old ancestors whose names they had to check the back of the photographs for, of Frank with his mother when he was younger, of Grandma Zhang…

After the Quest with Alaska, it had dawned on the gods that back in the good ol' days, if someone had restored the honour of a legion, they'd have gotten some kind of reward.

Percy, being Greek, had been cut out of the gods' reward budget, so Hazel and Frank had been offered an early retirement from the legion and a nice sum of money. Both had stayed within the twelfth's ranks and had been paid for the extra years handsomely. Frank had used his share to push on the insurance money and salvage the ruins of Zhang Manor. It wasn't quite as big as it was when Frank had been growing up, but it was a beautiful house that came off more as a modern farmhouse. Hazel especially appreciated how the living room's glass doors exited onto the wraparound porch on which they'd dragged a fire pit. She liked the windows and the white walls and the light _everywhere._ She liked the way that there was still a drop-down ladder to get to the attic, and that some rooms had slanted ceilings. She liked how there were steps to get to the front door, and she liked how there was a garage on one side of the house and a carport on the other, with porches on top of both. She liked how their bedroom had its own little veranda, and that Hazel could climb up a big, big tree and get in the house that way if she forgot her keys (it happened more often than she liked to admit).

Even better than the house was the property itself. Frank had refused to sell some of the land like the parade of real estate and banking experts had told him to. He insisted that it had served them well when Zhang Manor had been assaulted before the War with Gaia and he'd worked some other tactically intelligent design features into the house (or at least he'd made Annabeth do it). Hazel liked it for completely other reasons; obstacle courses and tracks had been left weaving through the woods from years and years of Zhang children training there. When Hazel jogged in the morning she could choose to stay close to home, her sneakers making the exact same footprints that Emily Zhang's may have made when she was younger. There were still targets hanging from trees or painted onto boulders, as if generations of Zhang family members were sticking their tongues out at the world like _we thrived here without any of you knowing, take that Olympians._

Hazel pulled up a chair at the breakfast nook as Frank rummaged around the kitchen, looking for ham, cheese, lettuce and whatever else he could load onto a sandwich.

"Do we have mustard?"

"We should," Hazel said quietly.

"Found it!"

"Mm," Hazel nodded. She pulled the sleeves of her black hoody over her hands and twisted the fabric between her fingers. Nico had left it with her last time he and Will had been here. He may murder Hazel when he saw how much she'd been wringing the sleeves.

"Do you want one too?" Frank asked.

"No thank you, I've had supper before," Hazel said.

A protein bar and half a pack of soda crackers while he'd been sleeping counted. It was better than it had been on other days.

Frank nodded and put his plate on the breakfast nook. He rummaged around and then smiled when he found a pack of Oreos in the pantry. He brought it with him as he sat next to Hazel and started eating.

"I missed these," he said twisting the top of an Oreo off and licking the icing off.

Hazel smiled. "I knew you would." She'd made sure to put packs _everywhere_ in the week before he'd come back home.

"Because you rock," Frank said before swallowing the cookie.

"I missed you too," Hazel said.

"I missed you more than I missed the Oreos," Frank confessed. "But I'm sure that you kept yourself busy."

Hazel nodded and he hoped that he wouldn't call her out on it or ask her to elaborate.

"What were you up to?" Frank asked. "Your letters never said." He took a huge bite out of his sandwich. "Did you go with Nico to hunt that dragon up north?"

Hazel shook her head. "He had Will and Lou Ellen. The house needs someone to watch over it."

"It doesn't have to be you," Frank said. "Did you enroll in some classes at the university? You know the money for it is basically up for grabs, the army paid for mine."

"I didn't see anything interesting on their list," Hazel said.

"Did you volunteer at the hospital like you'd been thinking about doing?"

"I couldn't get a police check done," Hazel said. She didn't have a birth certificate that would make sense for this era or any form of identification- no nothing. "They wouldn't let me."

"Okay. What about a job? Did you look? I mean, you don't have to, this place runs itself even if neither of us would lift a finger, but it _is_ nice."

"To have a job," Hazel asked. She'd heard enough bitching from the rest of the Seven talking about tips and small children under no parental supervision and retail to beg to differ.

"Well, to have a reason to get out of the house," Frank said. "Something to do. Stuff to stick on a resume until you find something actually worthwhile."

Hazel bit her lip and sometime while her teeth were implanted in her lips did Frank realise what was going on.

"You didn't leave the house, did you?" Frank asked.

Hazel shook her head.

"I've been gone eight months," Frank said. "And you didn't once leave the house?"

"Well, I did…" Hazel said.

"To do something that you wanted to do instead of running errands?" Frank asked, eyebrow cocked.

Hazel hesitated before shaking her head.

"Nico said he'd check on you," Frank said. "So did Percy- and Jason and Annabeth and… you lied to them."

Hazel crossed her arms over her chest and desperately wished that she could disappear. Shadow-travel away like children of Hades could- that would be practical. No wonder Nico had confrontation issues when such an alluring possibility was always at his disposal.

"Why?" Frank asked.

"I didn't want you to worry," Hazel said.

"No," Frank said. "Not why did you lie to everyone. Why do you never do anything? Why does the girl who used to train untameable horses, fight monsters and master magic stay so shut in all the time?"

"Because all of that was a long time ago," Hazel said clinching her jaw. "I don't need to do that now."

"We had hydras down here two days ago," Frank said. "I mean, we're demigods. You can dress us up but you can't take us out."

"I don't want to talk about it," Hazel said.

"Well I do," Frank said pushing his plate aside. "I would've worried sick if I hadn't thought that you'd take care of yourself."

"Looks like you should've been a little more concerned," Hazel said sharply.

Frank frowned and she cringed. This wasn't fair to him. He'd just come back from one of the world's most hostile zone and he'd probably worried about her the entire six months he was there while worrying about himself while worrying about his patients while worrying about Piper who was pregnant while worrying about monsters in a place where he had no demigod weapons while worrying about a thousand more important things…

"Maybe I should have," Frank said. "God, Hazel, that's not _healthy._ None of this is. I _know_ that you didn't eat supper; there are no dishes out. And do you think that I didn't notice how all the food in the fridge when I came back was stuff _I_ like to eat, not your favourites? The car's too clean to have been taken out more than once a week. The phone bills are basically flat. What's going on?"

Hazel looked at her hands. Frank took her hand.

"When I met you, you were quiet," Frank said. "This… this is the way you were. You didn't make plans, you didn't enjoy things fully. It's like you were sampling instead of actually living your life. And that made sense then- I mean, you thought you were going to die. Do you know how great it was on the Argo II when you started talking about being a jewellery asserter or doing horse therapy with kids or going to art museums all the way in Europe, and going to college and taking the bus all the time cause you could sit in the front, and trying sushi because Piper talked about it… Jesus, Hazel, you had all kinds of plans and ideas. Where did that _go,_ and why did it bring you with it _?"_

"Hell, Frank," Hazel snapped. "It all went to Hades."

She bundled up her fists angrily and froze, staring at the counter.

Frank slid off his chair, put his dishes away and came back to stand next to her. The back of his hand rested against her thigh.

"I'm sorry I went off on a rant," he said quietly. "I'm still trying to sort out my own shit, I just… Do you want to explain?"

Hazel took a deep breath.

"After the War," Hazel said. "Jason met his father, right?"

"Right," Frank said tentatively.

"And Annabeth and Athena reconciled."

"They did," Frank said.

"Your father gave you your favourite bow so you wouldn't be borrowing one from the legion all the time."

"He did."

"And Percy spent a week of Winter Break at his dad's palace," Hazel said.

"Yeah," Frank said.

"Aphrodite took Piper to Paris wedding dress shopping."

"Where are you going with this?"

"Everyone talked to their immortal parent!" Hazel said. "Everyone- everyone had a _plan_ after the war. Everyone had a blessing to- to go on with their lives, to be happy, to make plans! Me? My father hasn't even _shown himself._ Nico talks to him all the time, winds up in the Underworld for Thanksgiving and Easter no matter how hard he tries to make it to Mrs. Solace's house. Why is Pluto ignoring _me,_ then? Am I a left-over, have I been forgotten? And when he remembers that I'm still alive- what then? I don't _think_ I'm off the hook just because it's been ten years since the war. Don't you get it, Frank? I could literally get sucked out of my life at any point in time. I'm still what I always will be: a mistake. A runaway soul, an unwanted life. What's the point of going to college if I might die before my first test? What's the point of having a job if I'll drop dead on in some greasy restaurant? What's the point of putting myself in the lives of people who will only miss me when I disappear?"

Frank blinked hard, looking at Hazel as if he'd just woken up from a dream.

"You think…" Frank said. "You think the gods aren't done yet. Closing the doors of death."

Hazel shook her head. "I think nothing's changed. Do you remember what Thanatos said after we freed him, back in Alaska? My father couldn't come to me because he'd have to acknowledge that he needed me back."

"Oh, Hazel," Frank said.

She buried her face in her hands. This is what she hadn't wanted. For him to worry about this too. For him to burry about her. For him to realise that she was so fragile despite anything she could do.

She started crying, and Frank cradled her in his arms.

"Shh," he said. "It'll be okay."

"How do you know?" Hazel said.

"I don't, but I like to think so," Frank said. "I get that you… I get that you've seen things that nobody should see. I get that you've been to hell and back and that that's peculiar- really, I do. But I… I think we're all on Death Row. All us demigods."

Hazel looked up at him.

"It's true," Frank said. "I mean, we had hydras here two days ago? Cool. Maybe we'll get the Minotaur tomorrow. Maybe a dragon's going to crash through the door in ten seconds and eat me. Who knows. Or maybe when I walk out to get the mail tomorrow I'm going to get run over by a car or squashed by a toppling tree or struck by lightning."

"Don't go outside in thunderstorms to touch our metal mailbox," Hazel said.

"Okay, that was a bad example but _point remains:_ living itself is dangerous. Living when you're supposed to die may be dangerous, but what's the point if you don't actually do it? I'd give an arm and a leg to know that you're really supposed to be here with me, and I'd give so much more to keep you alive. You know that."

"I do," Hazel said. "And I do think I'm supposed to be here. Here with you."

"I don't think I'd be comfortable anywhere else," Frank said kissing the top of her head. "And the truth is I don't know if the Underworld Gods really are done cleansing the world now. I don't know why your father is acting the way he is, really. But I do know that if he does come for you, there are things you need to do first."

"I don't have a bucket list."

"Let's make one. And by the way, I'd go to hell with you. So I'm pretty sure Pluto knows that he can't fix the balance without tipping it again."

"Don't say that," Hazel said. "I don't want to die. Why would I want you to die for me?"

"I know you wouldn't," Frank said. "But it's what it'd be like. Bottom line, I don't think you're on death row right now. And if you are, I think it's psychological; the way that you're sitting around the house and waiting to die."

Hazel bit her lip and nodded. "It's just... hard. I'm not just a demigod. I'm a child of the three elder gods. Percy and Jason and I- neither of us have it easy, and there's nothing to do about it. You're sweet, but you wouldn't understand. It's like being a time bomb, but you're walking on a line of gun powder. And if you're me, you're also on fire. It's about managing those risks. It's about being fearless- which isn't easy. And this is a big, scary world that's changed like crazy since I knew it and I don't know what I want and where I am and what I could want... it makes it easier to lose interest and be afraid, when you don't know the world."

"Then it's time to fall in love with it again," Frank said. He kissed her forehead and took his phone out of his pocket, tapping at it for a few seconds. He turned the screen to show Hazel a traveling angency's website. "Here we go. Plane to Toronto tomorrow, transfer onto a plane to Germany, and it lands in Berlin a bunch of hours later."

"You can't be serious," Hazel said. "We can't just _go_ to Germany."

"Sure we can," Frank said. "Plane leaves tomorrow. You've always wanted to see the monuments to the war, right? Or we could go to France and see Juno Beach. You know what that is, right? Or we could stick to Paris and stuff, that's supposed to be nice. Here we go, Spain- we could just go to Spain, if you want! We could go to Denmark too, a guy at work said it was beautiful. _No,_ England. We could go to England."

Hazel smiled and took his hand. "Denmark... You know, worst case scenario, I think dying next to Big Ben would be okay."


End file.
